Cross posting from Af-Pak thread because it is relevant here too:
JE Menon wrote:These killings, though essentially local and apparently of minor players in the global scheme, will have worldwide implications.
A very rough and crude message is being sent by the Pakistani state. Everybody who has half a nut knows this. It is only a question of what the next moves are, and where it will lead. It's an unpredictable clusterfu(k really...
The Pakistani state thinks it is on the verge of defeating the Americans in Afghanistan. They are playing what they assess to be the end-game, and afterwards they will expose in dribs and drabs more and more of their dangerous strategic agenda.
We cannot, for instance, entirely ignore the almost casual bravado with which Erdogan ups the ante in the Middle East and East Mediterranean, while noting that the Turkish state has been getting very cosy with Pakistan over the past few years; even those who prefer conservative analyses of the situation, will have to acknowledge that this has to be seen in the backdrop of Pakistan's nuclear capabilities.
It is America's move.
A very perceptive post, JEM.
I have often wondered at the cosiness between the Turks and the TSPA, and all that it implies. To be fair, we haven't seen the Paki policy of nuclear-suicide-bomber blackmail being mirrored by Turkey until recently... but as you say, that is what seems to be happening today. Perhaps it is a wonder that it hadn't happened before today.
After all, contrary to all the bluster, Pakistan
ISN'T the first Muslim country in the world to have nuclear weapons.
See this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
Nuclear sharing is a concept in NATO's policy of nuclear deterrence, which involves member countries without nuclear weapons of their own in the planning for the use of nuclear weapons by NATO, and
in particular provides for the armed forces of these countries to be involved in delivering these weapons in the event of their use.
As part of nuclear sharing, the participating countries carry out consultations and take common decisions on nuclear weapons policy, maintain technical equipment required for the use of nuclear weapons (including warplanes capable of delivering them), and store nuclear weapons on their territory.
Of the three nuclear powers in NATO (France, the United Kingdom and the United States), only the United States has provided weapons for nuclear sharing.
As of November 2009, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey are still hosting U.S. nuclear weapons as part of NATO's nuclear sharing policy.[1][2] Canada hosted weapons until 1984,[3] and Greece until 2001.[1][4] The United Kingdom also received U.S. tactical nuclear weapons such as nuclear artillery and Lance missiles until 1992, despite the UK being a nuclear weapons state in its own right; these were mainly deployed in Germany.
Both the Non-Aligned Movement and critics inside NATO believe that NATO's nuclear sharing violates Articles I and II of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which prohibit the transfer and acceptance, respectively, of direct or indirect control over nuclear weapons.
...
The US insists that its forces control the weapons, and that no transfer of the nuclear bombs or control over them is intended "unless and until a decision were made to go to war, at which the NPT treaty would no longer be controlling", so there is no breach of the NPT.[6]
However, the pilots and other staff of the "non-nuclear" NATO countries practice handling and delivering the US nuclear bombs, and non-US warplanes have been adapted to deliver US nuclear bombs which involved the transfer of some technical nuclear weapons information. Even if the US argument is considered legally correct, some argue such peacetime operations appear to contravene both the objective and the spirit of the NPT.
Essentially, all preparations for waging nuclear war have already been made by supposedly non-nuclear weapon states.
At the time the NPT was being negotiated, the NATO nuclear sharing agreements were secret. These agreements were disclosed to some of the states, including the Soviet Union, negotiating the treaty along with the NATO arguments for not treating them as proliferation. Most of the states that signed the NPT in 1968 would not have known about these agreements and interpretations at that time.[7]
Results we may deduce, if the above is true:
1) Turkey has been in possession of nuclear weapons, as well as the equipment and know-how to maintain and deliver them, for a long time. As such its nuclear arsenal is likely to be in better shape for actual use than Pakistan's ever was.
2) On the other hand, since Nuclear Sharing was a policy evolved in secret, no one has any way of knowing the exact extent to which Turkey's nukes are under US control. Between absolute control (de-mated warheads and/or PAL locks to which the codes reside only in Washington) to nominal control (Erdogan simply has to phone the White House to inform them his birds are in the air) there is a vast range of possibilities.
3) Turkey has been the "dark horse" of America's Middle East policy for a long time. I believe this is because Turkey is in fact, the world's undeclared nuclear weapons state.
At one point, it became common knowledge that Israel possessed a functioning nuclear arsenal (thanks to US proliferation.) Do we really imagine that the Arabs, even the relatively pro-US Arab regimes like Egypt, Jordan or KSA would have simply put up with this? Some quid pro quo must have been given by Washington to Riyadh, Amman and Cairo for their acquiescence to Israel's nuclearization.
4) What was that "quid pro quo"? Most likely compromise: some Muslim nation, which the US already implicitly trusted with nuclear weapons, would be discreetly presented before Amman-Cairo_Riyadh as a Washington-approved Islamic nuclear "balancer" against Israel. I am sure the minutiae of this deal were hammered out in great detail, behind closed doors. Very likely, as part of it, Amman-Cairo-Riyadh were assured that Istanbul would be given *greater* autonomy over its nukes than it enjoyed under NATO nuclear sharing, so that it could act as an independent balance/deterrent against Israel.
5) The US would then have covered up the whole deal, publicizing an impression of friendly Israel-Turkey relations, sweeping this instance of proliferation neatly under the carpet (as they managed to do with German-Dutch-Chinese proliferation to Pakistan for over two decades.) The Israelis would have agreed to this compromise (what choice would they have?) in the belief that nukes in the hands of a "secular", NATO-allied Turkish army were better than nukes in the hands of any other Middle Eastern Muslim nation. Besides, if KSA/Jordan/Egypt were not "given" a nuclear Turkey as an Islamic balancer to Israel, there was always the danger that they might throw their weight behind the nuclear weaponisation of then-Saddam's Iraq, or Libya, or even Iran. To Israel, a nuclear Turkey was the price they were prepared to pay to have nukes of their own.
6) Like the Pakistan calculus in the East, the Turkey calculus in the West relied on one assumption: that the US would be able to "manage" jihadi radicalization in "friendly" Islamic states to which nukes had been proliferated by Washington, or by other powers with Washington's tacit approval. During the time all this began to be negotiated... during the closing years of the Soviet-Afghan war, I surmise... that must have seemed a cakewalk to the CIA's modern-day T.E. Lawrences.
7) As we know, events from 1996 to the present day blew giant holes in that comfortable assumption. First in Af-Pak, of course. But today, it is likely that Erdogan has taken a leaf from the Paki book and is trying it on for size. Both nuclear-armed Islamic nations (Turkey to a far lesser extent so far, but to some extent nonetheless) are making a mockery of what used to be known, in 20th-century parlance, as "nuclear deterrence." They are in fact using their arsenals as "nuclear insurance" to underwrite their regional, even global adventurism.
End result: "Deterrence", as the concept we knew it in the 20th century, is DEAD. This would be true even if I am completely wrong about Turkey, SOLELY on the basis of Pakistan's behaviour. Nuclear INSURANCE for military and political adventurism, cannot survive side by side with nuclear DETERRENCE, which by definition, was aimed exclusively at curbing adventurism. Using the possession of nukes to back up one's attempts to ALTER the status quo, makes nonsense of any doctrine where possession of nukes was used to MAINTAIN the status quo. It cannot be any other way.
9) Therefore: yes, it is America's move, and further, America had better make it fast. America, as the possessor of the world's largest nuclear arsenal and its oldest nuclear arsenal, wrote the rulebook on which 20th-century "Deterrence" and brinkmanship were wholly and entirely predicated.
Today Deterrence as a paradigm is dead and completely irrelevant. All that remains is a hollow shell maintained by pure inertia; it is only a matter of time before somebody uses nukes and then the breakdown of Deterrence becomes public spectacle, but even as things are, Deterrence for all intents and purposes has already broken down in the international system. We have Pakistan, and possibly Turkey, to thank.
10) The wisest move for America, if it wants to retain its upper hand at all, is to seize the initiative and establish the NEW paradigm. Deterrence is dead and gone... an entire global system of belief in nuclear "deterrence" that was established by
demonstrations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and followed up with decades of brinkmanship and propaganda. Whatever the new paradigm is... if America wants to dominate the world, America must be the one to define it and establish it. For America to establish this new paradigm, more
demonstrations are necessary. More examples need to be made.
11) America cannot keep fighting the Afghan war by conventional means for a variety of political and economic reasons. With the Chinook shoot-down, the Kabul attack and the Rabbani murder... Pakistan has signaled that no matter what inducements America offers, Islamabad's proxies are only going to up the ante and escalate in response. Erdogan is quite possibly sending the same sort of signals in West Asia and the Med.
Muslims with nukes are using those nukes as insurance to do the Quranic thing and swing their severely truncated pen1ses in the civilized world's face.
The only solution for the Americans is to show that it can, and will, engage in controlled escalation beyond the nuclear threshold (as currently understood in terms of lame-duck "Deterrence." ) "Deterrence" is dead. Political leaderships around the world know very well that "Deterrence" is a sham. The only question now is, who will call out the Emperor's New Clothes? Who will show that Deterrence is a sham by breaking it openly in full public view?
America cannot afford for China, or Pakistan, or Turkey or Iran to be the one who breaks the sham of Deterrence in full public view. America must break the sham ITSELF, because the power who publicly destroys the pretense that "Deterrence" exists, is the power best positioned to shape the paradigm of nuclear weapon use that evolves as a 21st-century successor to "Deterrence."
America must deliver a TNW strike against the Haqqani network's assets in NW Pakistan. No more NAVY Seal snatch-n-grabs: that only provokes more blackmail, more recalcitrance, more revenge attacks. America must show once and for all that it means business... that it is not constrained in achieving its interests by the existence of nuclear Saif-ul-Islams, because it is WILLING TO USE the Saif-ul-Unkil. Pakistanis will then remember that Saif-ul-Unkil utterly dwarfs even the most powerful "insurance" that Allah can bring to bear.
The TSPA must see, feel and experience the joy of a thermonuclear airburst over North Waziristan. This will do two things. First, it will take the initiative of "nuclear insurance" away from the TSPA and leave them with exactly two options in response: use a nuclear weapon in retaliation (directly or via "non state actors"), or grovel in complete and abject surrender.
The second thing a thermonuclear airburst over North Waziristan will do is to convince the Pakis, like nothing else, that if they even make a move that arouses the slightest suspicion of using nuclear weapons in retaliation...America will have no hesitation in providing more airbursts and groundbursts much closer to their manicured front lawns. There will be no more bribing, no more bleeding, no more dying by a thousand cuts, no more patrols to be ambushed, no more tankers to be burned. There will be maximum retaliation, guaranteed, against everything the Pakis hold dearest of all.
This is the only way America can win in Af-Pak, as far as I can see. It is also the only way America can regain oversight of the world's nuclear security architecture, get rid of the Deterrence tree that has been eaten hollow by the Chini-Paki-Turki termites of "nuclear Insurance"... and establish a new paradigm of which they are, once more, in primary control.
Indian Official Touts Work On Nuclear Deterrent
